A Joe Miller joke illustrating the usage of "set down". The hackney coach driver in the joke was apparently attempting to cheat the magistrate since the legal fare in the 1700s was a shilling (12 pence) a mile and the distance from Westminster to Charing Cross is less than half a mile. Source: Joe Miller's Jests or, The Wits Vade-mecum, with a new introduction by Robert Hutchinson. New York, Dover Publications, 1963. Facsimile republication of the 1739 edition.